


Belgrade before Belgrave

by BeaRyan



Series: Vera Memoria [1]
Category: The Order (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, If that's a no for you then dl;dr, age gap, fluffy aching longing, he's 18 and she's 26, not smut but not exactly not smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:27:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27692108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaRyan/pseuds/BeaRyan
Summary: "Vera Memoria" means "true memory" in Italian, aka Latin but make it sexy. Since canon didn't name the potion Lilith made to restore and fix their lost memories I did. Written as a series so I can give a different rating to each part.Hamish Duke's first kiss was in a castle basement an hour outside Belgrade, Serbia with a grad student from Belgrave University who was there doing field work.  It wasn't until he took Lilith's memory restoring and sharpening potion that he realized Veronica and Vera were the same person.
Relationships: Hamish Duke/Vera Stone
Series: Vera Memoria [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1938112
Comments: 12
Kudos: 26





	Belgrade before Belgrave

**Author's Note:**

> Author's note on their ages: In the episode where Alyssa breaks into Vera's house she stops to look at a framed article on the wall that reveals Vera won Potato Queen and received a scholarship the same year Princess Di died. I have decided that means she was 15 (pre-baby) in 1997 which means she's 38 in 2000. I can't mentally get Hamish over 30 until maybe the end of season two, but 8 years is the max age gap as I care to work with for this fic series. For me it also works OK that he's been a wolf for 8 years at the start of the series which means he turned at 20. Hides do seem to like undergrads. :) 
> 
> Author’s note 2: This series is about Hamish’s recovered memories so this should be his POV, but Hamish limited is the less interesting POV for this part so I’m writing mostly Vera.

**Day One, afternoon**

Vera pulled her jacket a little more tightly around her and forced a smile in the direction of the train rumbling slowly towards the sagging platform. Five days with Nicola Baird-Dewar and her family. Uggg. She’d get through this. She had to. The Dewar grant was funding her masters research in folklore, and without it to cover for her as she grubbed around Serbia and Romania learning Vlatch magic she’d have to head back to the United States and work through tubes of lipstick kissing the right asses and hoping she’s hitched her wagon to a rising star in The Order rather than a falling one. It just wasn't the life for her. She’d rather gather power than use it against others, and knowing more than anyone else was the least morally compromised way she’d found to do it. 

The grande dame carefully stepped off the train, and she was everything Vera expected from her emails. Regal, cold, confident. Her husband, tall and blonde, followed her. Two teenage boys passed suitcases off the train and onto the platform. The taller one had that spindly, lean look high school boys got when they’d just survived a zealous growth spurt. He was openly curious, smiling as the wind made waves in the fields that surrounded the town and carefully avoiding passing judgement on the village. The other was beefier and openly disdainful. 

Vera fluffed her short, red hair and stepped forward. “Welcome to Trska. I’m Veronica Stone.” 

With a confident yet somehow still limp handshake Nicola introduced herself then pointed to her husband. “This is my husband John Duke. He’s American, but I love him anyway.” Haha. The laugh of a woman who expected to be supported no matter what she said. “The tall one is my son Hamish. This is his graduation trip. Graeme is my baby.” 

Her “baby” ran his eyes over Vera like a stripper he didn’t plan to tip. She’d pour him full of grain liquor tonight and tomorrow he’d be too sick to be obnoxious. That might keep Nicola out of her hair for a day, too, if she had to stay in her rooms and tend her baby. John was polite but clearly only here out of family obligation. That meant Hamish was her only challenge to manage tomorrow, and apparently he wanted to be here. 

Weirdo. 

**Day One, night**

Nicola and John had gone to bed leaving Vera to entertain their sons, one of whom was obnoxiously drunk. Perhaps she hadn’t fully thought through this plan. 

Graeme slurred, “What the hell made you want to be here in buttfuck Eastern Europe writing down Grimm’s extra grim fairytales? That’s some bullshit.” 

Hamish leaned forward to apologize, again, for his brother, but Vera waved him away and refilled Graeme’s glass. This kid was spending tomorrow with his head in the toilet. 

“I think my brother may be past the point where more liquor makes him more charming.” 

“Shut up, virgin.” 

Hamish reddened and Vera fought not to roll her eyes at this ridiculously petty family drama. Her parents would have loved it if she’d held a little tighter to her virginity. “So this is your graduation trip? Graduation from what?” 

“High school.” 

“And you chose to celebrate that by rumbling through Europe on slow trains?” 

“I chose to come meet you.” He looked up abruptly. “I mean, not you specifically. The person who won mother’s family grant this year from Belgrave. Next year I’ll be making the decision and I just wanted to understand a little better what twenty thousand dollars can do.” 

“In Serbia it can do quite a lot. Especially when it’s unrestricted. People don’t want to be bribed. They want to believe that what they know is important. So the local historian takes a donation for a roof on a building they want to preserve and in exchange they let me translate their books.”

“Even if you don’t call it a bribe you’re still buying access,” Hamish said. 

“Maybe, but aren’t you doing the same? You pay the toll and in exchange the foundation gets to put their name on books that otherwise wouldn’t exist.” 

Graeme slurred, “You should buy access to a vagina. They’re great.” 

Vera turned her ring around, discretely ran a shallow cut across her palm, and muttered an incantation followed by an order. “Finish your drink and go to sleep, Graeme.” 

Graeme chugged the liquor in his cup, stood up then wobbled and fell over snoring on the couch. Hamish moved to help him. He had six inches of height on his younger brother, but it was all bone and long muscle. In a few years he’d fill out and probably be quite attractive, but tonight Vera feared the human cricket would get crushed by his giant slug of a brother. “Just leave him there.” 

“He’ll drool on the couch. Or worse.” 

“They’re wildly overcharging your parents to rent this house for the week. They can buy a new one.” Vera plucked her jacket from the hook by the door and slid her arms into the sleeves. Just a few more minutes and she’d be blessedly alone. 

“May I see you safely home?” Hamish asked. 

Where did this kid barely old enough to shave learn to talk like an old man? “You can watch me from the kitchen window. I live in the cottage behind the house.” 

“I’d rather walk with you.” 

Her heart fluttered at the attention, the chivalry. No doubt he’d be a gentleman about it, too. But no. He was too young. Far too young. And if his brother was to be believed he was still a virgin. “I’m 26, Hamish. I’ve walked myself home a lot. I’ll make it across the backyard.” 

“As you wish.”

Was he being an old man again or was that a Princess Bride reference? It didn’t matter. She was walking home alone. Alone as she always was. She was just reacting this way because she hadn’t been around anyone kind who spoke unaccented American English in two years. She could let her mind dabble with the man he might become, but the boy he was right now was barely out of high school. Not an option, not even for the few short days they’d spend together. 

**Day Two, 7AM**

The knock on her door was sharp, confident, and precisely on time. Damn. Nicola must have gotten up before Graeme had made it obvious he was ill. The woman was going to follow her to the castle and stand over her shoulder all day. Fine then. Hope she liked bad medieval Serbian poetry. They could talk at length about the challenges of translating it to modern English and how to keep it comprehensible without losing the meaning. People just didn’t compare their wives to turnips anymore. Love, like bitter root vegetables, could carry you through a cold, hard winter, but how did you make that clear to someone living in a split level tract home in Orlando? It wasn’t the grimoire she wanted to work on, but it was what the grant was paying her to study. 

“So good to see you!” Vera exclaimed with excessive cheer as she swung open the door. 

Hamish smiled back at her, “Good to see you, too. You said seven, so here I am.” 

“You knock like an adult.” 

“I am an adult.” 

It was hard to argue with him at that moment. He was tall enough that he’d have to duck to get through her door, looked like he’d slept like shit, and was cradling his cup of coffee like it was the key to survival. 

“I just meant I was expecting your mother.” 

“That’s a two part no. The grant is mine to manage next year, so her interest in it is limited. Additionally, Graeme started vomiting about three in the morning.”

“And she wants to listen to that all day?” 

“No, but she’s going to stay close and coddle him.” There was bitterness in his voice, and Vera felt a stab of sympathy. He was the older son, the responsible one, and his reward for that position was more work and less affection. 

“And your father’s staying with the two of them?” 

He nodded. “It’s just me following you to work today. They aren’t expecting to see either of us until dinner.”

It wasn’t her preferred way for the day to go, but on the range of options it wasn’t the worst possible outcome. “We’re spending all day in the basement of a two hundred year old castle that may fall on our heads. It’s summer but it will be cold underground, so you need to go put on another layer of clothes. There’s a well but no bathroom or plumbing. I’m packing lunch. Do you have any food allergies?” 

“Your mood shifts quickly.” 

“Allergies?” she prodded. 

“None.”

“Meet me at the car in ten minutes.” 

**1 PM**

He was a hard worker and good at following directions. She had to give him that. Five hours ago she’d handed him a digital camera, a kerosene lamp with an unstable reflector, a pair of gloves, and an old manuscript in a language he couldn’t read and told him to get clear pictures of every page. She could have given him a battery powered flashlight, but he might as well have the rural historian experience. 

When she’d spot checked his work he’d done it well, making a crisp set of digital images she could print out and bind into a working copy in the original language. It was a little pointless - she was certain it was a fable rather than a biography - but The Order loved having original reference material on hand just in case and publishing a translated edition would make her grant seem legitimate. She might even get a year’s extension on the money. She’d given Hamish a rough idea of the story and his passion for the concept had only grown as they’d discussed it over lunch. 

“Werewolf,” Hamish insisted. “He’s definitely claiming he’s a werewolf.” 

“The drawings show him on his hind legs. That suggests bear.”

“But look at the nose. That’s a wolf.” 

Vera looked again and shrugged. “Looks more like a snout than a muzzle. Maybe he’s claiming he shifts into a wild boar. I’ll probably just translate it as ‘monster’.” 

“Monster doesn’t work. He’s defending the people of the village from the evil witch.” 

“Nine times out of ten when a woman was accused of witchcraft it meant she’d found a loophole to control her own money and the men of the town didn’t like her giving the other women ideas about independence.” 

Hamish nodded his acquiescence. “And the tenth time she was a midwife.” 

Vera let him believe that and took another sip of her drink. No need to point out that if you burned enough hay eventually you’d burn the needle in the stack, too. 

She was accustomed to a long, silent lunch followed by a slowly sipped cup of tea, but Hamish was full of energy he didn’t know how to channel. He cleaned up efficiently then stalked restlessly around the room. “You can explore the grounds if you like,” she suggested. “Assume that anything could fall over at any time, but do go enjoy yourself.” 

“Enjoy myself?”

“This is your vacation, right? A graduation trip. No need to pretend that watching me work is fun.” 

“Your life is amazing,” he said with genuine awe. “How do you get away with it? How did you tell your parents you wanted to take a slow train to an hour outside Belgrave and crawl around basements in a town they wouldn’t ever find on a map? What kind of parent is OK with that? Do you lie? Is that the secret to your happiness? Just a pile of lies.” 

Vera calmly sipped her tea while his ranting and pacing continued. He was 18 and about to start college, and from what she’d gathered last night he was going to be a lawyer whether it interested him or not. A little crazy was to be expected, although she wouldn’t have volunteered to have it leak on her. 

He stopped abruptly and reddened. “I’m so sorry. Everything I just said, that really didn’t have anything to do with you.” 

“I guessed as much.” 

“It’s…” He gestured helplessly at the air.

“Your brother’s an asshole, your mother’s a demanding iceberg, and your father is here physically but mentally playing golf?”

He laughed, a welcome break in the tension that seemed on the edge of strangling him. “Graeme has always been a brat, but sex really did turn him into an asshole.” 

“It wasn’t the sex,” she said. “It was feeling that he was finally ahead of you. He’s the spare in the heir and a spare equation, and he’s got a complex about it.”

“I’m not ahead. In fact, I’m reaching an age where I’m falling behind. I’m missing steps and getting progressively weirder.”

Vera took another sip of her tea. Teenage sexuality was such a fraught issue. She’d lost her virginity at 15 and given birth at 16. Strangers had been eager to tell her she was too young for what she’d done. Here poor Hamish was just 3 years older than she’d been and he was convinced he was an awkward old man. “You aren’t getting weirder, or if you are it’s not because of that. Plenty of people your age are virgins.” 

“I’ve never even kissed anyone.” 

“You’re waiting for the right woman?” she asked. 

“No. Just a lack of opportunity. I went to all boys schools. Four times a year they’d bring over a busload of girls for a dance. A hundred of them to two hundred of us. I’m told they used to prefer the older boys, but by the time I was one of the older boys half the girls had realized they could skip boys entirely and date each other. The other half preferred the -” he lifted his finger in air quotes - “ ‘twink’ type. I’m more of a British scarecrow.” 

She couldn’t help but laugh at that. He was as thin as the trend required, but with his height and broad frame there was just too much of him. Also off trend, heterosexuality wafted in the air around him like the scent of pine at Christmas. “Your family is going to Sofia when you leave here, right? Go to a club and kiss some girl on the dance floor.” 

“Two problems: First, I’m a terrible dancer. People get hurt if I try anything wilder than a foxtrot. And two, that’s assault.” 

“It’s not assault if she’s OK with it.” 

He dropped into the chair beside her at the table. “How am I supposed to know if she’s OK with it?” He was sincere in his concern and sincerely pathetic. At a certain point fear of getting started did become its own obstacle, and she suspected he was right that he was past that point. 

She knew she shouldn’t, but it was a mild shouldn’t. A wine with lunch sort of shouldn’t. “You truly have no sentimental connection to your first kiss and just want to get it over with?”

He nodded.

“So kiss me. I give you permission.” 

“What?” He was intrigued, terrified, and titillated, and she gave him the time he needed to let those feelings grow and settle. “You’re serious?” 

“Step past the fear and get moving with your life. No excuses.”

“That’s a lot of weight to put on a single kiss.” 

She raised one finger and hooked it towards him with a come closer motion. 

His breath hitched as he leaned toward her. The kiss was a quick brush over her lips. Unremarkable in her history, but one look at him showed he’d never forget it. She was eight years older than he was and they’d stolen a secret kiss surrounded by old books in the basement of a crumbling castle. 

Crap. Did he think it was love? He was a kid. A kid who didn’t practice magic. For her this was just a way to have fun with an otherwise annoying interruption in her work. 

“Was that OK?” he asked. 

“It was. Now that you’ve started you just have to keep going.” 

“As long as women keep explicitly telling me that I have permission to kiss them I’ll be fine.” He looked up at her hopefully. “How do I get moves?” 

“Moves?” 

“As in ‘to make a move on a woman’. We were sitting at the table together and you told me to kiss you. It’s a single step. An order efficiently followed. An opportunity I’m not likely to encounter again. How do I go from a regular interaction to a... warmer one?” He wasn’t entirely innocent. It was a genuine question, but there was a challenge implied, a hint of an attempt at manipulation. 

She should walk away from this little game. Still, he was headed to college in a few weeks. Experience loomed on his horizon no matter what she did now. She wasn’t going to break him, wouldn't push him too far too fast. What if she’d had the opportunity to gently accelerate into adult relationships rather than the pedal to the metal approach she’d found in tenth grade? 

She covered his hand with hers and ran her thumb slowly over the rough skin of his knuckles. “When opportunity knocks it doesn’t stand on your doorstep pounding for days. There’s a window of opportunity. You’ll learn to spot it, but for now I’m announcing it. You are invited to test your moves on me from now until we leave here at five. Determine an opening, select an appropriate response, execute. Understood?” 

He nodded, and his jaw twitched. Every part of him understood. Some were even eager to play. 

For clarity she added, “You aren’t getting past second base.” 

“What’s second base?” 

“You’ll know when you get there.” She stood and stepped away from the table. “I need to get back to my translations and you still have more pages to record.” 

**4:45 PM**

Vera hadn’t expected to get much done with her benefactors in town, but being waylaid by sexual tension wasn’t one of the problems she’d anticipated. The way he looked at her. Damn. Once she’d joined The Order she’d almost exclusively dated men in it, and dating was often a calculation for both of them. Every pairing was an addition or subtraction to a person’s power and status. 

Hamish had never heard of The Order. He looked at her like she was a dessert he wanted to slowly devour. Did second base include devouring? Why had she limited him to second base? 

Because she was a decent person and he was barely not a child. 

This was about him, not her. Priorities. Values. Morals. She was well versed in all three, and she wasn’t going to abandon them just because when she glanced up he’d caught her eye and unconsciously run his teeth over his lower lip. 

“Start finishing your work, Mr. Duke. Your family will be expecting us to return soon.” 

It was pointless to stare at the words on the page any longer, so she focused on gathering up what she’d need to haul back to the house with them. The last thing she needed was to come in to work tomorrow and find animals rooting around for crumbs. Two thermoses that had held tea, an empty gallon jug for water, cloth napkins and every bit of leftover the food all went back into the lunch basket. 

She felt Hamish standing behind her before she turned to look at him. She had given him a challenge and a deadline and couldn’t really fault him for taking her up on the opportunity. “It was a wonderful picnic.” 

A truly good woman would shut him down and back away from the questionable situation she’d created. 

‘Good’ was such a bland word. 

Slowly she turned to face him. He towered over her and lust was plain on his face, but she didn’t feel threatened. She felt wanted, and it was intoxicating. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“I’ve enjoyed every moment of the day. Thank you.”

The kiss that followed was an obvious choice, but being inevitable didn’t lessen it. Slow, sweet, gentle, and so full of longing it made her ache. 

She remembered her own first and second kisses in the 4H barn at the county fair. Tommy Barton had asked for a kiss for luck and she’d given him a peck then run off. Later, after most people had left the fair, he’d found her in front of her own exhibit and given her a kiss for congratulations. One kiss into the next until her lips were bruised, her pulse ran fast, and she was on her back with straw in her hair and a clumsy hand down her pants. 

She waited for Hamish to push her onto the table, push her knees apart, push her towards something she’d push away, but he didn’t. The moment held, stretched out like a kite climbing on the wind, higher and with the string more taut but still exactly what it was. Soaring but innocent. Gentlemanly, beautiful, and intimate. Personal. She fought down a whimper when he pulled away. 

He leaned in and whispered, “Is this OK?” then gently rested one hand on each of her hips. 

“It is. You can even move them if you like.” Thoughts of where and how she’d like him to move those large hands ran through her mind like a series of pornographic gifs. Her conscience screamed that the eight years between 18 and 26 were distinctly different than the space between 26 and 34 and under no circumstances could she could she do more than kiss him. 

Her body wasn’t interested in moral debate. 

His hands slid slowly over her clothes, exploring hesitantly then eagerly. The top curve of her ass then down and around. Trailing his fingers up her side, over her breasts. He tested different touches. His fingertips, his palm. Grazing, teasing, varying the pressure. 

And then the alarm on her phone rang.

She stepped back away from him and cleared her throat as she tried to cover her panting breaths. “Five o’clock. Time to get you back to your family, college boy.” 

The lunch basket banged against her leg as she made a run for the stairs, but she didn’t go far enough fast enough to miss his answer. 

“College man.” 

**Day 3, 10AM**

The nice part of Hamish being from a family of assholes was that her mind was fully reset thirty seconds after she’d walked in the door last night. 

There was only one cafe and it didn’t seem very clean to them. The sheets were cheap, the water was pressure bad, and the lack of screens on the windows meant there were bugs in the house. Graeme couldn’t believe there was no sushi restaurant in a farm village in Serbia, Nicola needed a manicurist to fix her polish and John kept looking at his cell phone and sighing at the single bar of service. They’d come to a village without even a stoplight and acted surprised that it lacked the accommodations of an island resort. 

And then the power went out. No hot water, no fans, and they now considered every bite of refrigerated food in the town to be suspect. 

This morning she’d left out a loaf of bread and a selection of salted meats and smoked sausages for breakfast as well as directions for the woodstove and percolating coffee pot then headed up the hill to the castle with Hamish again folded into her passenger seat. They’d worked quietly through the morning, and, although she’d occasionally caught him sneaking glances at her, the steady click of the camera and flick of the pages suggested he was freed from whatever magic had been floating in the air yesterday. 

It was for the best. He was too young and inexperienced to use to break her field work induced dry spell, not that things had been particularly wet when she was back in the States. She had a type, and while Hamish was too thin for her taste, the Clarke Kent but make it intellectual with a dash of regency novel thing he had going worked for her. Unfortunately. 

He was too young, she reminded herself. Her more physical side had a long list of counter arguments. He was old enough to vote. To be drafted. To sign contracts. To take out student loans and rent an apartment. Older than she’d been when she was a mother. Her entire hands-off philosophy was based on her own assumption that she knew him better than he knew himself, and that was condescending, infantilizing, and rude. 

Damn. He’d caught her staring. 

“More kissing?” he asked. 

Well, yesterday she had told him to learn to spot a moment and grab it, and his desire for clear, explicit consent was admirable. To assure good behavior later in life it should be rewarded during the early learning stages. “Sure.”

Long legs took him across the room in a flash and he was beside her a moment after she’d consented. One kiss. A second. Her hands on his shoulders, his chest, his hair. His on her chin, the nape of her neck, her hips, first tentatively and then more firmly pulling her tight against him. 

Yesterday's steady heat was consumed by today’s fire, and why shouldn’t she give in and enjoy this? He was an adult. Thoughtful, smart, hard working. The worst thing about him was he was bony, but in four years and forty pounds he’d be a hell of a man. 

In four years she wanted to be temple magus. He’d be starting his second senior year of college. Fuck. 

Whatever this was to be it would have to be now, and there was a limit to how many of his firsts she was willing to harvest. Still, he was a good kisser, and she moaned just a little, uninhibited praise for a job well done. 

His hands gripped her more tightly. She felt him feel the sound, then he abruptly he shoved her away. “I’m sorry. So sorry.” 

She blinked trying to clear the tangled threads from her mind. “Sorry about what?” 

He blushed and stepped further back, awkward, shamed and somewhat hunched over. 

The answer hit her like a slap. He wasn’t just young; he was inexperienced. “Your erection? You’ve derailed the moment because it was going along the expected track?” She wanted to be nicer, but her own body was aching and wouldn’t be getting any relief. “How did you end up with so many hang ups at such a young age?” 

He shrugged awkwardly. “They sent me to an English boarding school as soon as I hit puberty. The American high school was basically the same but with a different accent.” 

“Your Scottish mother sent you to an English boarding school?”

“She’s the kind of Scottish Americans like and actual Scots don’t.” He sighed. “Can we not talk about my mother right now?” 

“Fair enough.” Vera rubbed her forehead and tried to find a path out of this ridiculous tailspin. She’d dated a few older men along the way, and the best of them had told her he tried to live by the Scouting axiom when involved with someone younger. Leave a person better than you found them when possible. At minimum don’t create a mess for someone else to clean up.

She took Hamish’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Ninety percent of women who’ve chosen to kiss you aren’t going to be offended if your body shows evidence of attraction, and the last ten percent weren’t going to be any fun in bed anyway.” 

He accepted the offered comfort and rested his forehead against hers. It was a moment of aching intimacy, one she hadn’t anticipated or bargained for, and it took her breath away. There were so many reasons nothing was ever going to come of this, but just for a minute she let herself want him. Let herself act on her desire. 

She was the one who kissed him. She was the one who pulled him closer then pushed him up against the wall and pressed herself against him. 

He groaned in response, and of course he did. He was a man shaped tribute to repressed desire. Evidence that someone didn’t just tolerate him but wanted him was a welcome disruption to his highly structured life. 

Don’t break him, she reminded herself. There was a difference between cutting a hole in the glass to allow in a little air and throwing a cinder block through a shop window. She would enjoy either, but only one was good for him. 

She wanted to do the right thing. 

She also wanted to ride him like a stolen horse pounding its way out of town. 

“Hamish, grab your shit. Dad found some farmer who’ll drive us back to Belgrade. We’re leaving.” Graeme clomped down the stairs as Vera and Hamish hastily separated and tried to pull themselves together. 

They failed. 

“Oh damn! The good son is fucking the help. Wait til I tell Mother.” 

Vera’s hand flew to her powdered problem solver before she had a chance to form a plan. Graeme breathed in the Pulvis Memori and collapsed to the ground. 

Hamish ran to his brother’s side. “What did you do?” he demanded. 

“What I had to.” The next handful of Pulvis was for Hamish, and Vera refused to consider the possibility that the stinging in her eyes was from anything other than powder spillage. 

A plan. She needed a plan. 

Leave him better than she found him. That was the most she could hope for, the most she could have. She’d fix the brother first. 

“Your name is Graeme Duke. You snuck up on your brother while he was fucking Veronica the grad student. He was amazing and his dick’s bigger than yours. You watched and jerked off like a pathetic little creep. You’re never going to mention what you saw to anyone and you’re done making fun of your brother.” 

Technically Pulvis only altered the memory. Any orders about future behavior were more of a suggestion than a command, but a properly constructed memory could have a significant impact. Even if Graeme did mention the created memory to Hamish he wouldn’t be surprised if his honorable big brother denied it. 

With a quick shallow cut to her palm she lit the fireplace, then took a deep breath and steeled herself to close a book she’d never get to finish reading. “Your name is Hamish Duke. You remember everything that happened up until you heard Grame’s voice from the top of the steps. It’s been chilly in this cellar, and we’ve had a fire going every day. You both passed out due to a fireplace backdraft.” She kissed him and left him with a blessing from the book he’d been recording. “May you love as boldly and as long as you live.” 

Smoke filled the room and both men awoke coughing. She walked them back to the truck where their parents and the driver waited and waved as they drove out of sight. 

Twelve years later

Lilith’s potion brought old memories into sharp focus and paired them with bits of information Hamish had heard and forgotten. Vera’s full name was Veronica Jane Stone. She’d spent four years in Europe collecting grimoires for The Order before coming back to Belgrave to get her PhD in Education Leadership and Administration. 

Vera Stone had been his first kiss. She’d shoved him past a few hang ups and given him the confidence he’d carried into his freshman year. It was only because of that confidence, that certainty that the right woman wouldn’t mind that he wanted her, that he’d approached Cassie, and without Cassie he’d never have met Tundra.

**Author's Note:**

> (Insecure comment begging for attention redacted. :)


End file.
